There’s a wide and mysterious chasm between the stated intentions of the Israeli government as depicted by the U.S. media and what the Israeli government has been doing in Gaza, even as recounted in the U.S. media.

With the morgues full, Gazans are packing freezers with their dead children. Meanwhile, the worst images to be found in Israel depict fear, not death and suffering. Why the contrast? If the Israeli intent is defensive, why are 97% of the deaths Gazan, not Israeli? If the targets are fighters, why are whole families being slaughtered and their houses leveled? Why are schools and hospitals and children playing on the beach targeted? Why target water and electricity if the goal is not to attack an entire population?

The mystery melts away if you look at the stated intentions of the Israeli government as

Following its reporting of the latest events in the Gaza Strip on Friday, including available details about an IDF soldier captured by Hamas soldiers early in the day, the New York Times was contacted by Israel’s military censor and told that future reporting related to the capture would need to be run through its office before publication.

“…the military’s censor informed The New York Times that further information related to the soldier would have to be submitted for prior review. Journalists for foreign news organizations must agree in writing to the military censorship system to work in Israel. This was the first censorship notification The Times had received in more than two years.

People hold a banner in solidarity with Palestinian people during a protest at the Pantheon in Rome. (AFP Photo / Andreas Solaro)

Hundreds of Italians have signed an online petition slamming Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip as a “slow genocide” of the Palestinians and demanding a “Nuremberg trial” for Israel over the “destruction” of Palestine.

The petition was signed by 525 Italians, mainly academics, Haaretz reported. The signees say they are dismayed by the events in Gaza and accuse Israel of pursuing colonial policies and “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians.

The document calls for Israel to face an international tribunal, a Nuremberg-like trial, for its war crimes and the “slow genocide” of the Palestinian people. Italian activists believe that not only the Israeli military and the…

[If you have any doubt in your mind as to how accurate Dawson is when he informs you that those who control Israel are openly racist and consider the Palestinians to not even be human, to be lower than animals, then please take 15 minutes to listen to the words quoted from the Israeli Zionists themselves: VIDEO — Quotable Quotes From the Chosen Ones]

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The murder of three Israeli youth by unknown Palestinians and the less-publicized but equally tragic murder of three Palestinian youth by Israelis, along with Israeli bombing of urban areas in Gaza and the arrest and detention of hundreds of Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces, serves as a reminder that Israeli-Palestinian peace is still a long way off.

And the Obama administration deserves much of the blame for the failure of the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

It had originally been hoped that the United States would present a binding framework along the lines of what moderate Israeli and Palestinian political leaders had agreed to in unofficial talks in Geneva in 2003: Israel would recognize a Palestinian state based roughly on the pre-1967 borders with mutual territorial swaps, which would leave the Palestinians with 22 percent of historic Palestine and allow Israel to keep the remaining 78 percent; the Palestinian state would be demilitarized and all irregular militias disarmed; illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory near the Israeli border — encompassing close to 80 percent of the settlers — would be incorporated into Israel while settlers in the more remote settlements would be required to return to Israel; there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel, but there would be international assistance in helping them resettle in the new Palestinian state; and some Israeli troops would remain along border crossings between the Palestinian state and its Arab neighbors, eventually to be replaced by international forces.

Image: A section of the barrier — erected by Israeli officials to prevent the passage of Palestinians — with graffiti using President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote when facing the Berlin Wall, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” (Photo credit: Marc Venezia)

The Palestinian government agreed to these terms. Israel rejected them. Rather than make public this framework, and thereby hope the Israeli public would pressure its right-wing government to compromise, the Obama administration instead insisted that “both sides” had shown a lack of will to compromise.

An interview with an anonymous U.S. official close to the peace talks in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest newspaper, confirmed numerous other reports that the Palestinian side made major concessions while the Israeli side essentially refused to make any, generally refusing to talk about any substantive issues.

A host of Democratic and Republican former officials — including a former national security adviser, secretary of defense, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, trade representative, and undersecretary of state for political affairs — went on record arguing that the Obama administration would have to challenge the Israeli government’s hard line towards the Palestinians in order for the peace process to be successful. Unfortunately, the White House apparently had no interest in doing so.

Instead, Washington has focused on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal to give in to U.S. and Israeli demands that he recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” While the Palestinian government, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the ruling Fatah party have all recognized the state of Israel for more than 20 years, the Obama administration has effectively moved the goalposts by declaring that recognizing the Israeli government, acknowledging its right to exist, and providing security guarantees is not enough, insisting that the Palestinians explicitly recognize the state of Israel’s ethno-religious identity as well.

No previous administration has put forward such a requirement. President Jimmy Carter never made such demands on Egypt, nor did President Bill Clinton require this of Jordan as a condition for their peace treaties with Israel.

Abbas has said that Israel can identify itself however it wants, but — given that 20 percent of the Israeli population is ethnically Palestinian Arab — it would be politically impossible to agree to something that would acknowledge second-class status for other Palestinians.

Never in history has any country been required to recognize the ethnic or religious identity of another state as a condition for peace. It appears, then, that the Obama administration’s demand may have been an effort to destroy any chance of a peace agreement and leave an opening to blame the Palestinians — despite their agreement to virtually every other issue — for the failure of the peace process.

The Obama administration had been strongly pressured by congressional supporters of the Israel’s right-wing government who supported a resolution calling on the President to push the Palestinians to recognize Israel explicitly “as a Jewish state.”

Meanwhile, a broad bipartisan effort is growing in the Congress to blame the failure of the peace talks exclusively on the Palestinians and to force the administration to cut all ties with the Palestine Authority.

Unless and until the Obama administration decides to end its unconditional backing for Israel’s right-wing government and instead support Israeli and Palestinian moderates, there will be no hope for peace.

Stephen Zunes, a Santa Cruz resident, writes for PeaceVoice, is a professor of Politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.

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As Israel carries out yet another attack on Gaza jewellers worldwide continue to conceal the fact that blood diamonds are supporting one of the most abhorrent and prolonged injustices against a defenceless indigenous people. Israel’s “prominent and central position” in the global diamond industry has ensured that diamonds which fund war crimes in Palestine evade regulation. Consumers have been kept in the dark and lied to about the extent of the blood diamond problem

Bob Bates, senior editor with JCK magazine, is a diamond industry insider who never tires of throwing dust in the eyes of his readers as he tries to convince them that the diamond market is no longer heavily contaminated with blood diamonds. His latest broadside is aimed at Jason Miklian, a researcher who caused considerable embarrassment for the industry when an article he wrote exposed some of the serious flaws in the Kimberley Process and spawned headlines declaring that 25% of all diamonds are blood diamonds.

Figure 1 – Diamond exports that generate revenue used to fund the Israeli military account for between one quarter and one third of Israel’s exports

In the patronising attack piece Bates claims Miklian discredited his original thesis when, in a later article, he used the term “up to 25%” rather than “about 25%” and that the diamonds he referred to were illicit diamonds and not blood diamonds. Bates’ arguments fall flat and are unconvincing but his effort exposes some contradictory positions of his own when it comes to blood diamonds.

According to Bates blood diamonds are “diamonds that are associated with violence, whoever the actor.” That simple definition is one I think most people would agree with. “Conflict diamonds”, the restrictive, sanitized term introduced by the diamond industry, are defined by the Kimberley Process (KP) as “rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to fund violence aimed at undermining legitimate governments” (emphasis added). When compared to “conflict diamonds” Bates’ blood diamond definition gives one some idea of the enormity of gaping hole in the Kimberley Process regulations which allows blood diamonds to freely enter the market.

Although rough diamonds associated with human rights violations by government forces are not “conflict diamonds” and, therefore, are not banned by the KP, they are blood diamonds. Similarly, cut and polished diamonds that fund human rights violations are not “conflict diamonds” but they are blood diamonds.

By restricting the remit of the KP to “conflict diamonds” and keeping public attention focused on rebel violence associated with the mining sector, the multibillion dollar trade in cut and polished blood diamonds is allowed continue unseen and unchallenged.

In a previous article titled The Other Blood Diamonds, referring to human rights violations by government forces in Angola Bates wrote:

“There isn’t the same international consensus among governments about diamonds associated with human rights abuses as there is with conflict diamonds. But really it’s hard to see the difference, at least from a consumer point of view. If they knew what was happening in Angola, most consumers would consider those gems blood diamonds.”

Now, however, Bates has rounded on Maklian for regarding “diamonds whose proceeds are used to support governments that commit human rights abuses against their own populations” as blood diamonds.

Bates says it’s “quite a broad definition, of the type that NGOs involved in the issue have deliberately avoided, because of the political morass it would raise.” NGOs avoided using this definition not because such diamonds aren’t blood diamonds but because doing so would create political problems in the KP. The NGOs that remain within the KP have clearly prioritised avoiding political turmoil over exposing the extent to which the diamond market remains contaminated with blood diamonds that fund rogue regimes. NGOs, whose first priority should be protecting the victims of diamond funded violence, should be highlighting the fact that revenue from the diamond industry continues to fund human rights violations on a massive scale and that consumers are being conned – buying diamonds that are certified as conflict-free even though a high percentage of them are funding gross human rights violations by government forces.

Global Witness, the London-based NGO that was to the fore in exposing the blood diamond wars, had no qualms about exposing the KP charade and withdrew from the scheme in 2011 after it allowed suspected blood diamonds from Zimbabwe to be certified KP compliant and sold on the international market.

The few NGOs remaining within the KP tent continue to prop up the discredited system of self-regulation and are used by the diamond industry to provide a veneer of credibility and respectability to their phony scheme.

Citing spurious examples of diamonds from Russia, some African countries and the USA Bates tries to justify the exclusion of diamonds that fund government violence being labelled blood diamonds. One, very telling, example he failed to mention was diamonds from Israel – a serial human rights offender and major force in the global diamond industry which stands accused of war crimes by the UNHRC, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The fact that the Israeli diamond industry is estimated to generate about $1 billion/yr. in funding for the Israeli military should have meant diamonds from Israel were regarded as blood diamonds and banned years ago. The vested interests that set up and control the KP, including Israel, the EU and the US, ensure these blood diamonds avail of the KP’s protective shield and are stamped conflict-free in accordance with a bogus “System of Warranties” introduced by the World Diamond Council to create the illusion that the KP regulations extend to cut and polished diamonds.

Bates’ argument that diamonds from any country accused of human rights violations could be classed as blood diamonds is a fallacious one. Unless revenue from diamonds is a significant source of funding for, or the cause of, human rights violations, as is the case in Israel and parts of Zimbabwe, then it would be difficult to make a credible case for classifying diamonds as blood diamonds.

Figure 2. The tiny Gaza strip is home to 1.6 million people two thirds of them are refugees and their descendants forcibly expelled from their homes, farms and villages inside present-day Israel in order to allow Jewish immigrants seize their property and create an ethnically cleansed electorate for the establishment of a Jewish state.

The case for banning the trade in diamonds from Israel is unquestionable. Israel’s record of unregulated nuclear weapons proliferation, war crimes and crimes against humanity, the harrowing situation of the 1.6 million Palestinians crammed into and imprisoned in the besieged Gaza strip plus the millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants languishing in overcrowded refugee camps since 1948 and the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem subjugated and tormented by an apartheid regime which is funded to a very significant degree by revenue from the diamond industry are compelling reasons to label diamonds from Israel blood diamonds.

Bates’ statement about the situation in Angola is even more applicable to Israel’s human rights violations:

“But of course most consumers don’t know about this issue. There hasn’t been much publicity or a consumer campaign about it. Yet that doesn’t mean there won’t be. And it could be extremely damaging if there was. The industry has every motivation in the world, for both ethical and business reasons, to get ahead of this issue now, and pressure Angolan miners and the government to clean up their act, before it comes back to bite us.”

The diamond industry in Israel is the cornerstone of the economy that generates the revenue needed to sustain a belligerent apartheid regime which commits serious human rights violations on a daily basis and ignores all attempts by the international community to broker a just and lasting peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

The US market consumes 50% of the global diamond production and half of the diamonds sold there come from Israel. Given this reality it is little wonder that when the Texas Jewellers Association recently announced plans for the first ever Israel – Texas diamond fair human rights activists who favour a single democratic state in Palestine/Israel started a petition calling on the TJA to end their collaboration with the Israeli diamond industry. As Rob Bates’s said about diamonds from Angola: if they knew what was happening in Palestine, most consumers would regard those gems blood diamonds.

Sean Clinton is a human rights activist from Ireland with a particular interest in Israel/Palestine and the role diamonds play in funding the Zionist project in Palestine. He has authored several articles about the double-standard in the diamond industry which facilitates the trade in cut and polished blood diamonds

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political, economic, scientific, and educational issues. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:

February 2014:Corporate Watch’s new briefing exposes how the Israeli economy profits from the siege of health services in Gaza and highlights calls from Palestinian health workers to boycott Israeli pharmaceutical companies.

Overview

The Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip prevents the proper functioning of Palestinian health services and the effective treatment of sick patients. At the same time the Israeli economy, and particularly Israeli pharmaceutical and transport companies, benefit from the captive market provided by a population living under occupation.

In summary, the interviews below show that the Israeli siege is detrimental to health services in Gaza in the following ways:

Health services, health workers and their patients are subject to direct military attacks.

Health services have a shortage of medicines, fuel, medical equipment and spare parts as a result of the siege.

NABLUS, (PIC)– The Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) refused to allow treatment of Dr. Abdulsattar Qassem, a lecturer of political science at Najah university, in Jerusalem.

He said in a terse statement on Monday that the IOA refused to give him permission to enter Jerusalem for medical treatment.

He added that his request for treatment at Makased hospital was turned down for “security reasons”.

Qassem said that he asked for a similar permission a few weeks ago but was also rejected, adding that doctors had recommended his treatment in Jerusalem due to presence of better treatment for him there.

GAZA, (PIC)– The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) expressed in a statement deep concern over the deterioration of humanitarian conditions of the civilian population due to the aggravation of the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR is deeply concerned that the current crisis may impact the access of 1.7 million Palestinians to vital services, including the supply of drinking water, and that this crisis may result in the suspension of work in some vital sectors, such as health, sanitation and education, according to the statement.

According to PCHR’s follow-up of the chronic power crisis in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Energy Authority in Gaza announced that the operation of the Gaza Power plant was totally stopped on Friday morning, 01 November 2012.

PCHR confirmed that the shutdown of the Gaza plant power has left serious consequences on the humanitarian conditions of…

GAZA, BEIRUT, RAMALLAH, (PIC)– Youssef Rizqa, political advisor to Palestinian Prime Minister in Gaza, called for forming an international committee to investigate the killing of President Yasser Arafat.

Rizqa ruled out that the PA will open an investigation to uncover Arafat’s killers, “because the Israeli entity will not allow that, as it is considered one of the main suspects.”

A report by Swiss scientists said the results of tests on Arafat’s remains “moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210”.

The tests demonstrated unexpectedly high levels of polonium and the report said polonium levels in bones and soft tissues were up to 18 times higher than the normal limit.

Hamas movement reiterated that the Israeli occupation is directly responsible for the assassination of President Arafat, and asked for opening an urgent investigation and taking the necessary measures…

Published on Nov 4, 2013
The Energy authority in the Gaza strip say a shortage of fuel has halted the production of electricity across the blockaded coastal enclave. They say this is because the stock of fuel is zero. The situation results from Israel’s destruction of tunnels used for bringing fuel into Gaza. The Energy authority also accused the Palestinian Authority of charging Hamas too much for its fuel.

As the world is busy debating whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did indeed use chemical weapons against its own people or if he is instead the victim of a somber plot hatched by foreign powers to “legitimize” their invasion of yet another Muslim country, Israel is calculatingly moving against Islam’s beating heart, the al-Aqsa Mosque in al-Quds (Jerusalem).

While Muslims worldwide are dissecting and assessing their political affiliations — pro or anti — the Zionist entity of Israel is using such engineered confusion to inconspicuously carry out an aggression against Islam of such magnitude that only a few have dared fathom it, let alone warned against it.

Israel is looking to build a temple on the ground of al-Aqsa Mosque, thus desecrating Islam’s third most sacred place after Mecca and Medina, thus sullying the very ground which the prophet of God, Mohammed (PBUH), walked upon, which…

Gaza, Alray – A document released by Israeli civil administration exhibited that Palestinians continued to cultivate the land where Amona outpost had been installed until 1996, according to Haaretz newspaper’s Wednesday’s edition.

This document refutes settlers’ claim that the land where the outpost is located was an uninhabited territory.

The newspaper said that Amona, one of the first outposts built on Palestinian land in the West Bank, was set up on private Palestinian land registered in Department of Land Registry in the name of its respective Palestinian owners who are residents of Silwad town northeast of Ramallah.

The Israeli authorities demolished 8 buildings after a petition to demolish the outpost was filed in 2008 by Yesh Din on behalf of…

JORDAN VALLEY, (PIC)– Israeli occupation forces (IOF) razed 15 structures in the Basaliya Bedouin area in the northern Jordan Valley on Tuesday and ordered its inhabitants to leave the area.

Aref Daraghme, the chairman of the Wadi Al-Malih and Bedouin tribes municipality, said in a press release that the soldiers destroyed three rooms, which were built before 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and tin houses and sheep pens.

He said that dozens of people have been rendered homeless due to the ceaseless IOF demotion campaigns in Wadi Al-Malih valley.

Hundreds of houses and structures were razed in six hamlets inhabited by Bedouins in Wadi Al-Malih over the past two years.

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Jewish settlers break into Aqsa plazas

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– Jewish settlers broke into the Aqsa Mosque at an early hour on Wednesday morning to offer…

AL-KHALIL, (PIC)– Jewish settlers, on Wednesday under the protection of the Israeli army, removed a wall inside the corridors of the Ibrahimi Mosque in al-Khalil city in the southern occupied West Bank and stole its stones.

Taysir Abu Sneineh, the Director General of the Ministry of Endowments in al-Khali, told Quds Press that the cleaners of the Ibrahimi Mosque found yesterday that the settlers, with the support of the Israeli occupation army, removed an ancient wall inside the mosque and took its stones to an unknown destination

Abu Sneineh considered that this act represents a blatant assault on the Ibrahimi Mosque and aims to change the mosque’s features and Judaize it, under the protection and support of the Israeli government.

A Palestinian teenager was knocked down and killed by an Israeli military jeep in a town in the southern West Bank.

Palestinian police and witnesses said that the youth 19-year-old Moataz Sharawna, died after being hit by the vehicle during overnight clashes between Palestinians and occupation troops in Dura which lies just southwest of the city of Hebron.

An Israel military spokeswoman confirmed an incident in the town, but claimed that initial reports suggested soldiers had fired at a youth who had “climbed onto a military vehicle.”

“Overnight there was an activity in Dura village near Hebron and a group of Palestinians began hurling rocks at the security forces who were in the area,” she told AFP.

Medics at Hebron’s Alia hospital confirmed to AFP that the victim had died after being run over.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– The Aqsa foundation for endowment and heritage said that the Israeli company for the reconstruction and development of the Jewish quarter intends to establish a tourist saloon over the roofs of Palestinian commercial stores in Al-Lahhamin and Attarin markets in the old city of occupied Jerusalem.

The Aqsa foundation stated on Tuesday that this plan is a Judaization project par excellence and falls within the all-out Judaization campaign that is executed by the Israeli municipal authority in Jerusalem and its business partners.

The foundation warned that this project would tighten the Jewish grip further over the the old city and would serve as a new outpost in its heart and near the Aqsa Mosque.

Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian & Islamic identity

Al Quds, Jerusalem is the main target of the ethnic cleansing to turn the city of “Jerusalem” into…

On Thursday 27th June, beginning at 9 AM, Israeli military bulldozers demolished the homes and structures of four families in the village of Khirbet ‘Atuf, a shepherding village east of Tammun in Tubas Governorate. One man was taken to the hospital in Nablus after being physically beaten while attempting to protect his family from Israeli soldiers. Another man had his vehicle confiscated by Israeli authorities, and the total cost of his lost property totals $13,000 USD, not a small sum for a shepherding family. While Israeli authorities usually provide demolition notices to the families whose homes they are destroying, these families were given none. Other villagers fear that the demolitions of their own homes…

The Israeli army is reportedly preparing to launch another all-out war against the besieged Gaza Strip in a bid to eliminate Hamas resistance movement.

According to Israeli Walla website, the Israeli army is preparing to launch the Operation Pillar of Defense II against Gaza to stop rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory despite a significant decrease in their number.

The Israeli website said since the Israeli regime does not have confidence in the current peace in the southern part of Israel, it wants to launch another military offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas military infrastructure.

It also added that the Israeli army will deploy more troops in the future war to prevent Hamas response.